


Repeating History

by mggislife2789



Category: Criminal Minds, Spencer Reid - Fandom
Genre: Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 10:17:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11621505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their original stories. This is only for fun. It's where my brain goes after the credits roll. No copyright intended. Better safe than sorry. ;)





	Repeating History

For weeks, Spencer had looked like hell. The BAU’s resident genius, full of life and even fuller with intelligence had looked drawn and tired all the time. As his friends, the members of the BAU would’ve known something was wrong with Spencer even if they weren’t profilers.

The youngest member of their group had been dating a woman named Y/N for nearly two years. They loved her. Absolutely loved her. And Spencer did too, but for the past six months they’d been fighting - mostly about the fact that Spencer was never home, and when he was, he retreated into himself and into the dark corners of his mind. A job like this meant needing even better communication skills than another relationship, but for as much as Spencer could ramble, he didn’t convey his emotions well. It was one of his few faults, but it was there, and apparently, it had bitten him in the ass.

As Spencer walked into the round table room, a cup of coffee in hand and half-lidded eyes barely allowing him to see where he was going, the rest of the team could see that something big had happened with Y/N. “Okay, what happened?” Hotch asked. Normally, he wasn’t the first one to ask, but he’d known Spencer long enough to know that if he didn’t get what he was feeling out, he wasn’t going to be able to focus on a case, and he needed Spencer to be focused. “What happened between you and Y/N?”

“How-”

Morgan rolled his eyes and sighed. “What do you mean how do we know, kid? We know you. What happened?”

After a few seconds of heavy silence, he spoke softly, the words barely scratching out of his throat. “We broke up. I broke up with her.”

“What?” JJ exclaimed. “Seriously?”

“What happened?” Emily prodded again.

“What do you mean, what happened?” Spencer practically yelled, bringing the attention of another few FBI agents from outside the round table room. “What happened is the same thing that’s been happening for the past six months! I come home and all I hear is that I’m never home. That I’m not putting enough into the relationship! I told her if that’s the way she felt, then I’d just leave. She said nothing, so I left. Now I don’t even know what we are anymore.” He was trying not to cry, and he was able to keep the tears away, but he was overwhelmed and slapped his hands against his face, refusing to make eye contact with his teammates. He loved Y/N more than anything, but he had no idea what to do anymore to make her happy, so he guess he’d stopped trying. Maybe that was his fault…he didn’t know.

Penelope’s eyes were glazed with tears. Not only did she know how much Spencer loved her, she knew how much the rest of the team loved her too. “Did she say what you could do to make her happier?” Hotch asked, his voice laced with knowledge of the past that he wished he’d known at the time. “Did she ask you to quit your job or something?”

“No,” Spencer said quickly, shaking his head and taking a sip of his coffee. He still wasn’t looking at anyone, probably because he knew what they were going to say. “She said she’d never ask me to quit my job, but that I needed to actually be there, whatever the hell that means, when I was at home.” Using air quotes in Spencer’s case meant that he knew exactly what she had meant but refused to acknowledge it. “How else can I be there for her? With all that we do, how does she not understand that I can’t just come home and turn work off? It doesn’t work like that.” 

While Morgan, Emily and Penelope gave him understanding glances, JJ, Hotch and Rossi couldn’t help but smirk - like they knew something he didn’t. “What is it?” Spencer asked.

The corners of Hotch’s lips turned upward, realizing just how similar Spencer sounded to him when he was younger. Hayley was much like Y/N. The last thing he wanted for Spencer was to have him repeat history. “Reid,” Hotch started, “She didn’t ask you to quit your job. She didn’t even ask you to lie to her about work. I don’t know her as well as you do, but from what I do know, she doesn’t want you to close off.”

“You do have a tendency to lock yourself away from others after cases,” Emily said. She finally realized where Hotch was going. He’d done the same thing to Hayley and it had led to the demise of their relationship. Spencer was headed in the same direction, if it hadn’t happened already. 

Spencer glared at them in disbelief. “You’re on her side!”

“Spence,” JJ said, cutting her eyes at him like she would her boys when they were fighting. “We are on your side. She makes you happy. What we’re saying is that instead of going home and locking yourself away from her, you should talk to her. Even if it is about work and how it’s affecting you.”

“But then I’m filling her head with this crap,” he said, pointing up toward the screen where a picture showed two women strangled to death. “Either way I can’t win.”

Morgan clapped Spencer on the shoulder. Spencer didn’t have much experience with relationships, but Morgan had more than his fair share. “Did you bother to ask her if that’s what she wanted you to do? Because if you didn’t then you just busted up your relationship for nothing and despite that 187 IQ makes you an idiot?”

“Really, Morgan?” Spencer asked disbelievingly.

Morgan shrugged and as Spencer glanced around the room everyone seemed to echo his sentiment. “How am I the wrong one? I don’t get it. I’ve been trying so hard to be a good boyfriend and a good profiler, and yet I’m somehow wrong?”

“If you allow yourself to be a good profiler in lieu of being a good boyfriend, then yes,” Rossi said. “Y/N has a right to tell you if that’s what she wants to do. If she’s okay listening to you talk about work and how it affects you then that’s her prerogative and all your protection, quote unquote, is getting in the way of your relationship.”

Spencer heaved an enormous sigh and dazed off for a moment. Before turning his attention toward the case. “So what do we have?”

—-

Later that day, the team found themselves in Chicago searching for a pimp that strangled his girls to death when they aged out of their usefulness to him. Spencer had seen plenty of horrible shit in his day, but seeing children and other groups that didn’t have a voice being harmed hurt him to his core. He took a deep breath, his hand on his hips as he took in the scene.

JJ looked over and noticed how badly he was feeling and decided to use this moment to possibly knock some sense into him about Y/N. “This is the type of thing we were talking about before,” she said softly. “No one, Y/N included, expects you to come home and forget about work. She knows it doesn’t work like that, but instead of closing yourself off to her, tell her how this job makes you feel.”

“That’s such a burden.” He loved her. Why would he do that?

JJ knew that. Of course she did. “True. But she’s choosing that burden because she loves you. Allow her to choose. Don’t silence her voice. We fight against that type of thing, you know?” 

Spencer’s heart lurched into his throat. When she put it like that, he couldn’t believe it? Not allowing her a choice was keeping her from using her voice. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he should try to salvage this relationship. If she would let him.

—-

After three days, the unsub had finally been caught and the team made a swift retreat back to their respective homes. When Spencer walked into the apartment, he saw a bunch of boxes being packed, things hastily thrown into boxes. “Y/N?” He called out. He prayed that he wasn’t too late.

She walked outside and caught his eye, a bit surprised that he was already home. “I didn’t know you’d be home yet. I’ll be out of here soon.”

“Please, don’t,” he said quickly, grabbing her arm as she turned to go back to their bedroom. “Can we talk? Please?”

“About what Spencer? I can’t do this closed off thing anymore.”

Spencer kissed her temple and pulled away. “I know. I know that I tend to close off after I come home from a case. I do it because I hate the idea of putting those pictures in your head, but I’m away a lot, so by the time I’ve worked through things, I’ve got another case. For so long, I’ve been trying to balance being a good profiler and a good boyfriend, and I’ve been failing at the boyfriend part. Miserably. Can we please work on this? I can’t bear to lose you.”

“Let’s start now,” she said. “How was the case?”

“Horrible. A pimp was strangling his prostitutes to death after they ‘aged out.’ Just horrible.” When she saw the tears rise in his eyes, she grabbed his hand and brought him to the couch.

“Just tell me about it,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you either. Talk to me, and I’m sure we can work through this together.”


End file.
